Republican Ron Estes wins in 4th District congressional race (Kansas)

[TexasTowelie]

Source: McClatchy News

Update 9:43 p.m.: The Associated Press says Republican Ron Estes has won the special House election to replace Mike Pompeo. He has 52 percent of the vote to Democrat James Thompson’s 47 percent with 519 of 620 precincts counted.

Update: 9:35 p.m.: Sedgwick County election officials had counted about half the county’s votes by 9:30 as some problems cropped up with the county’s new voting machines.

Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman said she “kind of expected” that counting would be somewhat slower as workers adapt to the new technology, which uses a touch-screen machine to produce a ballot card that is then fed into a separate counting machine.

At two locations, Reformation Lutheran Church and the Edgemoor Recreation Center, poll workers removed the memory cards from counting machines before the machines had finished processing the votes, Lehman said.



Read more: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/election/article144065034.html

[NewDealProgressive]

1. Of course Kansas was always going to do the wrong thing.

It's Kansas.

Don't expect better in Georgia either.

This blows. It's hard to believe the country can be this fucking obtuse and yet, here we are.

[Dawson Leery]

3. The GA district leans GOP.

Not many rural areas in GA6.

[Cattledog]

12. The 6th is next to my district. It is Urban/Suburban.

It is more comparable to Sedgwick County which the Democrat won. Ossoff is way ahead in the polls but must get 50% or there will be a runoff.

[stevepal]

14. I'll tell you who's obtuse and it's not the American people.

Ever since the first time it was obvious that the voting machines were tilting the vote, which for me happened about 2002 with the GA election, there's always a group of people defending the machines, even here on DU. Most recently Beth Clarkson here in Wichita KS who is a statistician working at the NIAR (the Natl Institute of AViation Research) on the WSU campus ran exit polls at 6 polling stations in and around Wichita. She got the same results that everybody else gets when he does honest exit polls. The title of her article after the election was "Our elections are rigged. What are we going to do about it?" The answer of course is NOT A DAMNED THING. By now, the problem is way beyond fixing unless some notable figure in the country takes it on him or herself to crusade on this and harps on it every day, constantly, in every context, states the facts again and again and again. the same way Trump makes up lies and continues to harp on the obvious lie day after day. ONLY THIS IS THE TRUTH. IT'S BEEN VERIFIED AGAIN AND AGAIN FOR OVER A DECADE NOW. You can't trust the voting machines to give an accurate result. The exit polling done in the country, what there is of it now, always "adjusts" the results so they will match the so-called final tallies (which are arrived at in a black box of total secrecy w/o any effort at verification at all in 99% of the cases). How do they justify this "adjusting" of the exit polls to match the results. It's the "Reluctant Republican Responder" theory that Republicans are more reluctant to tell pollsters their vote than Dems. The evidence for this phenomenon? Why look at the results of the elections. They obviously don't match the exit polls so it must be something wrong with the polls. It's a vicious circle that has given us over time, little by little, the rock bottom politicians we've got now, absolute cretins in places of authority. The inmates in charge of the asylum.

[mreilly]

21. Just what I was going to say.

... I'd expect nothing more from Kansas. The fact the Democrat got 47% of the vote is something positive anyway. Before Trump it would probably have been 25% or less.

[democratisphere]

2. Damn it!

Another redumbliCON.

[iluvtennis]

8. +++ agree

[drmeow]

10. My thoughts exactly! eom

[Jake Stern]

4. Considering the extreme right tilt of the district

The fact that the Dem lost by less than 7 points is encouraging.

[aeromanKC]

5. +25%

Dems will do just fine if they can go +25% in all districts. (Dems lost by 32% in 2016 and just 7% tonight)

[iluvtennis]

9. Yay!

[tazkcmo]

6. Shocking!

Not really. Just another typical Kansas election.

Get ready for the criticism of the DNC and state party for not throwing away money on this race. In my opinion, no amount of money would have made a difference. We're talking about a state that's bankrupt, it's schools are so under funded the state SC called it unconstitutional and they re-elected the governor that vetoed Medicaid expansion twice and is the "brain child" behind the whole mess.
If they aren't going to vote Democratic after all that then they'll never do it. I won't lose any sleep over it.

[SansACause]

7. Estes has to run again in 2018

Disappointing result, but the Grab Our Pussies had to put everything they had into winning this heavily Republican district by single digits. In 2018, when there are 435 seats up for grabbing, it'll be much harder for them to do so. Keep your chins up!

[Bengus81]

19. And Thompson has announced he'll run again....

He was ahead most of the night. It was just in the last couple of hours that Estes caught him and went ahead. Last time Pompeo ran for that seat he won by 30%--that's fact.

Thompson made a great showing and isn't standing around crying about it. He's ready to run a longer than 2.5 month campaign.

[PoiBoy]

11. Remember... it's not who votes...

...it's WHO counts the votes that wins elections...

There has to be ways of monitoring the votes and the count... IMO

[KeepItReal]

16. Not if you can't see the actual source code on the voting system

It's faith-based voting.

[Achilleaze]

13. победа за нами !

[Vinca]

15. Too bad. Kansas GOPers must like living in a bankrupt state.

[ananda]

17. It's a very sad situation in Kansas.

Too much Koch.

[turbinetree]

18. Just wonder if the count would be different if they had to vote with a pen and a paper ballot

like they did in the Netherlands to save there country, after all Kansas was one of the first states to fully enjoy as David Daley and his excellent book.
"Rat-Fucked: The True Story Behind The Secret Plan To Steal America's Democracy."


And just think the Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach had his "new" machines out and up and running, just in time for this vote




I have no pity for anyone in Kansas that voted to put a man in congress by the name of Estes that will vote to take away your social security, medicare, and he is coming from a state, that did not and I repeat did not over ride a veto of medicaid expansion and he supported was the primary yes man to Brownback.

Now Kansas just imagine the yes man Estes for Ryan and his AYN RAND policies----------------------you were warned

But the political novice and "liberal" will be back in 2018:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/why-democrats-thrilled-special-election-kansas-estes-thompson

[kimbutgar]

20. Has Thompson conceded?

These changing of tabulators cards are very suspious and need to be looked into. I am so sick and tired of rethugs always stealing elections. And democrats giving up too easily.

I remember when Franken refused to concede in his election with Norm Coleman because of some suspious stuff and he ended up winning. And don't get me started on the presidential election in 'Michigan where there were no votes for the president in Detroit on at least 80,000 ballots.

[MichMan]

22. Not true about Detroit

There were 80K across the entire state. Detroit only had around 1400. Many of those may have been write ins for Sanders